16 December 2013

Blog post: PC Harrington and what PRs can learn from fraudsters

I nearly became a fraud victim yesterday. Nearly, because I didn’t. But it was very close.

I received a call on my landline at around 11.30pm yesterday from PC Harrington at Holborn Police Station. PC Harrington gave me an internal police identification number and said that they had just arrested two men who skimmed my debit card to raid my bank account. The police found £1,200 when they arrested them. PC Harrington urged me to call my bank straight away and told me to not log in to my online banking account in the next 24 hours, as this would enable the fraudsters to take more money from my account.

I hung up, slightly confused. One minute later I received another call from PC Harrington, he gave me a crime reference number and asked whether I had already called my bank. He urged me to hang up and call the bank straight away, so I did and called the helpline of my bank. I spoke to Adam, who was very friendly and, after taking my name, said that there had indeed been some suspicious transactions on my account in the last two hours. He asked many questions and then asked me to type in my card details on my phone. The line became a bit crackly and when Adam mentioned my Mastercard credit card (whereas I’m with Visa), finally – finally! – the penny dropped.